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Kishida Toshiko

Toshiko Kishida (岸田 俊子, Kishida Toshiko, 14 January 1863 – 25 May 1901), afterwards Toshiko Nakajima (中島 俊子, Nakajima Toshiko), was one of the first Japanese feminists. She wrote under the name Shōen (湘煙).

Biography

Near the end of the Edo period, Kishida Toshiko was born in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, in 1863. She grew up in a sound merchant household where her mother, Kishida Taka, would help strengthen her daughter's intellect through readings and discussions. She grew up during the Meiji period, which lasted from 1868 through 1912. During this period Japanese leaders opened themselves up to new ideas and reformers called for “new rights and freedoms”. The women of this reformist movement are now known as “Japan’s first wave feminists”. Kishida was one of the first females to get involved in this wave and the focus of her movement was to increase the status of young Japanese girls, particularly those of the middle and upper classes. This improvement “was essential if other technologically advanced nationals were to accept them”. Reformists stressed that equality had to be given to all Japanese women. With the reforms that took place in Japan, Japanese women were given greater opportunities to gain new rights and freedoms. The women coined the term “good wife, wise mother” which meant that “in order to be a good citizen, women had to become educated and take part in public affairs”.

After the Meiji Restoration, public schools began to open around Kyoto, it was here that Kishida was educated and said to be top of her class. At the age of 18, she was recognized for her talents and thus selected to be a Chinese Classics tutor at the imperial court for the Empress, an honor unbeknownst to the commoner class. However, in 1881, after just two years, she felt that the imperial court was “far from the real world” and was a “symbol of the concubine system which was an outrage to women”. Kishida took on the reform movement full time and began speaking across Japan. Kishida began to tour Japan and speak for the Liberal Party (Japan, 1881). By April 1882, she also spoke out against the inequality of Japanese women and how influential women were to the popular-rights movement. After her October 12, 1883 speech, “Daughters in Boxes,” (Hakoiri musume; 箱入り娘), she was “arrested, tried, and fined for having made a political speech without a permit” which was necessary under Japanese law at the time.

In her speech, Kishida introduced the three “boxes” present in Japanese families. These boxes are not actual boxes but mental and emotional limitations. The boxes represented how Japanese daughters were locked into certain requirements. The first box is one in which parents hid their daughters, who not allowed to leave their room and any elements belonging to the outside world were blocked out. The second box demanded the obedience of the Japanese daughters. In this box, “parents refuse to recognize their responsibility to their daughters and teach her naught”. These daughters receive no love or affection and are expected to “obey their [parent’s] every word without complaint”. The final box presented by Kishida was one in which daughters were taught ancient knowledge. In this box, parents passed down an appreciation for knowledge to their daughters. Out of the three boxes, this final box was the one that Kishida valued the most. Because this box valued “the teaching of the wise and holy men of the past”, Kishida felt that its inclusion and focus on education empowered women.

Kishida also discussed her own version of a box. Her box would have no walls and be completely open and inspired by freedom. Kishida’s box “[allowed] its occupants to tread wherever their feet might lead and stretch their arms as wide as they wished". Unlike the other boxes Kishida described, her wall-less box, like the reformist movement hoped, would allow Japanese daughters to be educated and become active members of society. The speech also suggested that the boxes created for Japanese daughters should not be created in haste. She explained that if a box that was hastily constructed, the daughters would resent being placed in that box. Kishida not only warned about the construction of the boxes but recognized that the daughters trapped inside the boxes would run away because of their restrictive foundation. "Daughters in Boxes" analyzed and critiqued Japanese society and its treatment of Japanese girls. The absence of women’s rights in Japan sparked the feminist and reformist movement which Kishida Toshiko was a major part of. Kishida’s speech challenged the cultural norms of Japanese society in general. The speech also cemented the place of women and women’s movement in Japan’s history.

November 1883, Kishida, along with a Liberal Party leader, Nakajima Nobuyuki (中島信行, 5 October 1846 - 26 March 1899), traveled from Ōtsu to Tokyo and was notified of the Liberal Party's inevitable collapse. Soon after, the Liberal Party collapsed and Kishida abandoned speaking in public and tried her hand at writing instead. In 1884, she pushed an article in a Tokyo newspaper called "To My Brothers and Sisters," conveying to her readers the desire for equality. In 1886, Kishida married the founder of the Liberal party, Nakajima Nobuyuki, afterwards, she seemed to disappear from public speaking and, instead, supported her husband.